Kurt Vonnegut's America

Jerome Klinkowitz

Publication Year: 2012

Kurt Vonnegut's death in 2007 marked the passing of a major force in American life and letters. Jerome Klinkowitz, one of the earliest and most prolific authorities on Vonnegut, examines the long dialogue between the author and American culture—a conversation that produced fourteen novels and hundreds of short stories and essays. Kurt Vonnegut's America integrates discussion of the fiction, essays, and lectures with personal exchanges and biographical sketches to map the complex symbiotic relationship between Vonnegut's work and the cultural context from which it emerged—and which it in turn helped shape.
Following an introduction characterizing Vonnegut as Klinkowitz came to know him over the course of their friendship, this study charts the impact of Vonnegut on American society and of that society on Vonnegut for more than a half-century to illustrate how each informed the other. Among his artistic peers, Vonnegut was uniquely gifted at anticipating and articulating the changing course of American culture. Kurt Vonnegut's America shows us that Vonnegut achieved greatness by passing his own test—opening the eyes of his audience to help them better understand their roles and possibilities in the common culture they both shared and crafted.

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Table of Contents

Preface

Kurt Vonnegut’s America derives from what I was doing in the days following
Kurt’s death. Knowing that he’d suffered irrecoverable brain injuries in a fall
three weeks previous and, after all measures to help him failed, that he’d been
taken off life support a few days before, I received the news with a sense of grim
inevitability. ...

Introduction - Vonnegut Released

Kurt Vonnegut died late in the evening of April 11, 2007, at the age of eighty-four
years and five months. Five months precisely—his birth date was November
11, 1922, Armistice Day, as it was called then, when there was only one
world war to remember. It was a hallowed occasion throughout the 1920s and
1930s and into the 1940s, ...

1 - Vonnegut’s 1950s: Human Structures

Kurt Vonnegut’s debut as a writer of fiction came on February 11, 1950, when
Collier’s, one of the great family oriented weekly magazines of the era, published
his story “Report on the Barnhouse Effect.” But as the key date in his
literary career, October 28, 1949, looms more important. ...

2 - Vonnegut’s 1960s: Apocalypse Redone

In the 1950s, a period of relative stability in America culture, Kurt Vonnegut
had faced challenges by shoring up older values. Not sociopolitical ones, as
conservative thinkers would have them, but anthropological foundations such
as the family structure and benefits of a folk society where everyone had purposeful
work and a sense of value. ...

3 - Vonnegut’s 1970s: A Public Figure

As the 1970s began, Kurt Vonnegut—for so long an unappreciated writer,
struggling to publish when and where he could—found himself front and center
everywhere. From best seller lists and magazine features to widely reported
speeches and commencement addresses, the man and his opinions were sought
by an eager public. ...

4 - Vonnegut’s 1980s: Arts and Crafts

The 1980s were easier for Kurt Vonnegut, and—in a material sense—for most
Americans as well. The cultural conservativism of the Ronald Reagan years was
an antidote to the turmoil of the 1960s and the political mess of the 1970s.
Certain 1950s issues were also put to rest, including cold-war terrors, ...

5 - Vonnegut’s 1990s: Autobiography and the Novel

As a major American author still happy and healthy and writing for an appreciative
readership in his seventies, Kurt Vonnegut spent the 1990s enjoying
himself. There were still a few periods of depression, and even more of exhaustion;
he’d often complain that he’d done a lifetime’s worth of work and was
ready to go home. ...

Conclusion - Vonnegut Uncaged

Kurt Vonnegut had stayed active late in life because, in all humility, he felt his
country needed him. Or at least that he could be of use, which we know was
the cardinal value he believed human beings could possess. ...

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